


a non-comprehensive guide to homeostasis in desert environments

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Team as Family, a deep and frankly disturbing love for the vegas golden knights, completely fictionalized everything because i just do not care at all, flagrant disregard for timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: 20 moments in the birth of a teamor,the story of how J. Marchessault got his groove.





	a non-comprehensive guide to homeostasis in desert environments

**Author's Note:**

> me during game 1: haha what song best represents marchessault
> 
> moliver nearly instantaneously: oh no by marina and the diamonds 
> 
> me, in tears, already opening google docs: you can't just SAY that
> 
> and, lo
> 
> enjoy xoxo

**-4**

He goes undrafted, which- 

Fine, whatever. It burns. 

He’d been good, he’d been really good, but really good apparently doesn’t cut it. He’s small, he’s angry, he’s a little too eager on the forecheck and he likes to try to dish hits he just isn’t big enough yet to follow through on. He takes too many penalties and he screams in the box sometimes, but he can work on it. 

That’s what gets him through the day. He can work on it. He can dig in, foot out and down, arms in tight and pumping like a machine, press on up the ice, press on up the ranks. He’ll make it. He’ll fucking make it if he has to crawl there. 

He thinks he's gonna stop burning eventually, but then he grows up and he claws into and then back out of the AHL and he never does. 

It stays tight and hot and pressurized in his chest.

 

**-3**

They tell him he got traded over the phone at the asscrack end of the afternoon, just before the end of regular business hours, when no bad news has any business showing itself. It’s fucking disrespectful.

_Bastards_ , he thinks viciously the whole time they’re talking, the whole time he’s mouthing out the fucking media lines they expect of him. Yeah, he can be a fucking team player. Yeah, he’s so _super-duper fucking stoked_ to have this chance to make a name for himself on a new team. Oh, yeah, he totally appreciates his time with the Panthers, shit yes. 

He knew it was coming. He knew it from the moment his name didn’t show up on the damn protected list, but that doesn’t do shit-dick to soothe the screaming fire in his chest. 

He’s booking a flight as soon as they hang up, before he calls anyone, before anyone from the Knights can call him with some bullshit words about how welcome he’s gonna be in Vegas. It’s fucking expensive, whatever. He has money to burn, but less time. He’s gotta get his blades into the ice. He’s gotta work on it. 

He’s played his heart out for teams before and this isn’t any different. He’s gonna give his all, for the love of the fucking game, and he’ll like a couple of the guys, and when the Knights fall apart in the preseason like the expansion team they _deeply_ are, he’ll weather it until they trade him on again. 

The pressure and fire in his chest are roaring like a furnace, blasting heat in every direction. He discovers he’s digging his nails into the old, soft wood of his dinner table and lets go with conscious deliberation. 

The first flight he can really get a ticket on is late the next day. He goes to beat the shit out of the wall of his garage until the sun goes down, him and his stick and the battered tennis ball.

 

**-2**

He drives an hour through Miami to find the dark little dive bar he pretends to himself he doesn’t have the route to memorized. 

Three shots in a row to get himself loose and then out on the floor, pressing between bodies. Hands find him and glance away again and he loses himself to it like he never can anywhere else, throws himself into being touched and touching. Because no one’s gonna recognize him tonight but tomorrow, once the news breaks and he becomes a big deal, he can’t take that chance. For tonight, he’s as free as he’s ever going to be. 

The heat in his chest is roaring higher and higher, at the hands grabbing at him, yanking his hair, pulling at his shoulders and digging questing nails into his shirt. It hurts, stings in his throat, and he wants. He _wants_. 

A big hand grabs his shoulder, spins him, and he comes to rest with his back to someone’s chest. They have a few inches on him, hot and big and a proprietary hand questing over his chest. He leans back into the man and nearly purrs his approval. 

They go back to the man’s place, drunk as shit but not drunk enough for Jon to make the mistake of bringing a man back to his own place. 

The man fucks him like it’s a fight he’s gonna win and Jonathan takes it and screams for it. Fights back, arching into it, rolling them over and trying to climb on top until the man gets him up against the wall above the headboard and grinds him into it. Slams him against it until the bed is rattling against the wall with the force of his thrusts and Jon is breathing high and reedy through his mouth, panting out little moans with every brutal shove. 

The man passes out after offering to let Jon stay the night. He accepts the no with good grace and Jonathan limps to the curb to hail a cab and lays his head back against the headrest to watch the night sky pass, washed out under the streetlights. 

His whole body hurts like he’s been doing bag skates for an hour. He supposes, fighting to keep his eyes open so he doesn’t end up passing out in the back of the cab like he’s fresh into the AHL and barely able to hold his liquor, that he sort of figuratively has been.

 

**-1**

The next day he hurts even worse, which he kind of expected and is a little grateful for. If there’s anyone that can take a dick that size with minimal drunk prep and think straight enough the next day to cause a media incident, their name isn’t Jonathan fuckin’ Marchessault. 

He gets a window seat in coach because like _fuck_ he wants to get recognized, not that he thinks he will, but just on the off chance. He stares out the window at the land turning into desert below him and burns and burns and burns.

 

**0**

“Oh, I love Vegas,” he lies through smiling teeth, and the reporters laugh politely.

 

**1**

He gets handed a fresh, unworn jersey. He’s been handed fresh jerseys before, has been welcomed to more than his share of teams. Gallant smiles at him, and Jon smiles back and even mostly means it. It’s hard not to get caught up in all the pageantry shit. 

He walks back to his spot in the room between two people he vaguely knows and can nod to with tight smiles. 

Everyone knows Fleury when he gets up to stand in front of them. He’s got pretty Cup rings and shadows under his eyes a little too deep. His smile doesn’t look as dazzling as it should, all lips and no teeth. Jon looks at him and doesn’t really understand what he’s seeing. It’s like a magic eye puzzle. He keeps expecting a Penguins logo to pop up somewhere. 

“‘Ello, all,” he says cheerfully and then, “Band of misfit toys, hmm?” 

The room fills with titters. 

“We’re here for hockey,” Fleury says after the laughter has passed, and that, that doesn’t get a laugh at all. “We’re here for the game. That’s all. That’s it. We’re here to play hard and play our best.” 

“Fuck yeah we are,” someone calls from down front, Jon isn’t sure who. Probably Karlsson. 

Fleury grins at that, a real grin. 

The magic eye puzzle resolves itself. A dizzying swoop and the jersey bunching up under Jon’s fingers, and then Fleury is a goalie standing in the middle of the locker room of a team that had grabbed him from the team that had left him up for grabs. A tired man, well into his career, a slump behind him that makes Jon queasy to contemplate. He’s got as much to lose as Jon, as any of them, maybe more with his heavy, heavy Cup rings weighing his hands down. 

“We’re gonna own this shit,” someone calls from Jon’s left. It’s Reaves, Jon discovers when he glances over, and he thumps his stick on the ground in support. 

“We’re gonna play good,” Fleury says and points at him. “And own some ass!” 

Jon chokes on a laugh and so does everyone else, but it breaks the tension and Jon’s left staring down at the jersey in his hands. At least, he thinks cautiously, the colors are decent.

 

**2**

A win is a win is a fucking win, but Jon doesn’t think anything has ever tasted as sweet going down as the Gatorade he chugs in the locker room that night. 

A won home opener. The first home opener. The crowd, the intensity of it, how he’d felt something clog in his throat. Everyone is shouting, hands pounding his back, ruffling his hair, and he’s grinning like an absolute goddamn fool. They’re winning. The Knights are fucking _winning_. 

“Three _fucking_ zero,” someone shouts, probably Karlsson. The whole locker room goes up again, sticks and feet pounding the ground and the benches. Jon drums his fists on the bench and his heart is going like crazy. _Three fucking zero_. 

“Media is coming in five minutes,” someone else shouts from the door. “Get you fucking shit together and no jockstraps where I can see them!” 

Jon snorts and turns back to his locker to get himself at least somewhat presentable. He’s not the big event tonight, probably will barely feature compared to Neal, but that’s fine by him. There’s a twelve-rack waiting at home, if one of the boys doesn’t drag him out, and he could probably use a longer shower. Exhaustion is setting in. 

Reaves jostles him as he’s getting his jacket on, shoulder to shoulder. He knocks Jon straight against the lockers and when Jon rebounds into him, tries to knock him back a little in retaliation, it’s like trying to get a brick fucking wall to take a step back. They just end up leaning into each other a little. 

Ryan elbows him. He’s grinning like a fool and Jon grins back. 

“How you doing, man?” he asks, an undertone. “You look like you’re gonna hurt yourself, you’re thinking so hard.” 

“Media says we’re gonna choke,” Jon says and shrugs. It’s more likely than not, even with their chemistry, even with the way he can feel everything coming together like- Jesus, he doesn’t even know. “Says three wins are a fluke.” 

That burn, licking up in him a little bit. Play hard, play angry, play his goddamn best and still he can’t shake it. 

Ryan elbows him again. 

“So prove them wrong, Marchy,” he says like it’s that easy.

 

**3**

Home is an empty, quiet house. It doesn’t bother him as much as it could. 

He’s had worse houses, and some of the boys like to come around. Perron actually won’t quit calling him, which is- 

Well, yeah. 

“I’m _coming_ ,” he shouts irritably from the kitchen in the direction of the insistent doorbell. He’d been dicing chicken for lunch and he takes the time to wash the nasty meat juice shit off his hands before he actually goes, despite the way Perron is still leaning on his doorbell like a total asshole with no regard for Jon’s peace of mind or sanity. Jon’s neighbors probably hate him. 

“You’re a sad little man,” Perron informs him as soon as Jon opens the door and Jon contemplates slamming the door on him, except that Perron’s sliding right past him like he doesn’t need an invitation and the moment of action has passed. He sighs and closes the door carefully, like a fucking gentleman, and follows Perron to his kitchen. 

He’s grabbed the knife and is dicing up another chicken breast, still without asking. 

“What,” Jon asks, “are you doing?” 

Perron looks at him like he’s stupid. 

“Making lunch, mon cher,” Jon is informed. “Get some salad going.” 

Jon goes and starts some salad. It seems like the best course of action. 

“Why are you in my house?” he asks when the spinach and romaine have been diced and the appropriate but grudging amount of sundry other healthy vegetables have been tossed in too. “Don’t you have food at your own place?” 

“Of course I have food at my own place,” Perron tells him grandly, which doesn’t really answer the first question at all. 

“So go make lunch _there_ ,” Jon prods. Perron rolls his eyes at him. It’s distinctly juvenile. Jon flips him off. 

“Find me a frying pan, your kitchen makes no sense,” Perron orders. Jon goes to find him a fucking frying pan.

 

**4**

They get their asses handed to them three times in a row and a bunch of the guys drag him out despite the fact he’s pretty sure he’s radiating anger like an evil little sun. 

It’s some kind of terrible 80’s night at the bar they end up at, horrible club remixes of beloved hits blasting over the speakers and half the drinks the boys shove into his hands hideously fluorescent. Karlsson and Eakin and a swarm of indistinguishably Canadian D-men headed to the dancefloor as soon as one broke out and he’s left with Flower, Ryan, and some of the other veterans. 

He takes a moody sip of something way too heavy on the rum and not heavy enough on whatever it is that’s making it so pink. Overhead someone has mangled Tainted Love to the point that Soft Cell’s singer assuring them all that sometimes he’s gotta run away is barely coherent. It’s like, astonishingly bad. 

He considers his drink again and then downs the whole thing in two long swallows. 

Flower leans over where Ryan’s crammed up against his side to nudge at him. He’s smiling when Jon narrows his eyes at him. It’s not his usual mischievous thing, more sincere and quiet. 

“Slumps happen,” he says quietly, quietly enough Ryan pretends not to hear it even though he can’t have missed it. “S’all it is. We get through.” 

It doesn’t help, exactly. He’s not a fucking rookie, he knows all about slumps and losses and feeling like shit. But he feels his shoulders slump and the ugly heat trying to force his mouth open subside. _You mean that?_ he wants to say, which is a sign that he is being a pathetic sack of shit, and also that he’s had either too much or too little to drink. 

“I need a beer,” he says instead, and Flower grins like he’d actually responded to his earnest reassurance. The perceptive fucker. He does fuck off to get them another round though, and Ryan laughs lowly. 

“Fuck off,” Jon tells him, and Ryan grins at him shamelessly. He looks more drunk than Jon is, sprawled out loose and careless, grinning with lidded eyes at Jon like he knows something Jon doesn’t. There’s a lot of him to sprawl. It’s a hell of a look. 

“He’s a good fake captain,” Ryan says in French, and he’s definitely still laughing at Jon. 

Jon discovers he isn’t as angry as he should be and sighs, slumping down into the uncomfortable vinyl seat. The way he’s trapped up against the wall means his right side is brushing Ryan’s no matter what he does. 

“He is,” he mumbles, in time for Flower to come back and slide two beers across to both of them. They’re exactly what Jon and Ryan like, respectively. The fucker. 

“I’m off,” he says cheerfully and beams at them, bright and like, disgustingly trustworthy. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

He’s out the door like a second later, like a little localized hurricane. Jon sips sourly at his beer. 

“We should freeze his underwear during practice,” he mumbles and Ryan laughs, grabs his beer and takes a good pull. He’s got his arm up over the back of the bench, a wrist pressing heat against the back of Jon’s neck. It’s incredibly distracting. Jon does his level best not to think about it. 

“You want ‘nother drink?” Jon asks after a little while. 

“Nah,” Ryan says, and he looks serene like Jon wishes he could be. “I’m good.”

 

**5**

They beat the shit out of the Senators like a day later and Jon doesn’t score but he’s pounding the boards and screaming and yes, yeah, he gets it. 

Flower grins at him like a fucking dickhead and Jon smiles back like the stupid asshole he is.

 

**6**

Flower takes a puck to the mask and troops off the ice and doesn’t come back. 

It’s quiet in the arena, entirely too quiet. Jon wishes it were loud. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, can feel the pound of it in his fingers, can’t feel much else but how he’s slowly burning, burning, burning. 

Sutter turns from where he’s talking to the refs and just-

The fire roars to life in him, snaps every single control Jon’s put on it since he was a shitty little preteen getting sent off the ice for sticking someone in the face. Anger like he doesn’t even fucking know. 

He’s off up the ice, skates digging in like he wants to cut with them, slamming Sutter back against the boards as the refs scatter in confusion. He rebounds back and digs in again and crowds up before the refs or another Canuck can pry him away. 

“If you touch him again,” Jon spits in Sutter’s startled face, “fucking touch Flower again, they'll be scraping you off the fucking ice, I'll-” 

An arm Jon belatedly recognizes as belonging to Reaves gets around him and hauls him back, still spitting out furious words he only realizes are French because they’re coming more fluidly than they usually do. 

“Marchy,” Reaves shouts at him and Jon shoves at the unforgiving mass of him, tries to get back around him to get at Sutter. 

“ _Jon_ ,” Perron hisses in his ear and he realizes he’s been wrestled back to the bench, penned between Reaves on one side and Perron on the other. They outweigh him, and he collapses back against the cold plastic barrier with a snarl. 

He’s burning, burning up from the inside out with all the anger of it. Helpless, ugly anger, because they can’t afford to lose Flower, not Fleury-

A hand catches him by the shoulder, fingers sneaking through the gap between his jersey and his helmet to rub against slick sweaty skin. Jon startles so hard his skates rattle against the ground. Reaves is the one with the hand on him. Perron’s looking down at him, steady and dark-eyed and pinning Jon down into the seat like the gentle hand on Jon’s shoulder is actually a lead weight. 

“Sois calme,” Perron murmurs, barely audible over the crowd baying for more. _Be calm_. “We need you.”

 

**7**

There’s a party to celebrate something that Jon truly cannot be assed to remember at the moment, as his liver has been temporarily replaced with a keg of incredibly shitty beer. He’s had so much Rolling Rock and Busch Lite he’s about to start pissing wheat-flavored water, although he’s drawn the line at the alarmingly vibrant selection of mixed drinks or the punchbowl of dubious provenance. 

He has the sneaking suspicion that he’ll have sampled both by the end of the night. He just hopes that’s after everyone will have drunk enough to forget how to operate their camera phones. 

A man can dream. 

He’d driven the Lambo to the party because what is the _fucking point_ of a car like that if he doesn’t drive it places to receive adulation about it. 

“That's the fucking ugliest car,” Perron says, awed, and Jon jigs in place a little. There's a grin threatening his face and he lets it come. It's a fucking _beauty_ car. He loves Lamborghini and he loves the sun gleaming off the fresh trim and he loves beer, especially. 

“Shut your dumbass mouth,” he retaliates, “fuck, I fucking love this car, holy shit.” 

“Hashtag Vegas born,” Reaves reads off the door and he's laughing at the car and probably Jon too but Jon frankly doesn't give a single solitary shit. He's still dancing in place and the keys are jingling in his hand and if it weren't for the many multiple beers sparking him up he'd be back behind the wheel already. 

“Shut up, shut up,” he chants and lays his hands reverently on the hood. “Shut the _fuck_ up in front of a fine lady, Reaves.” 

“You're a fuckin’ freakjob,” he tells Jon peaceably and Jon waves him away to topple onto the hood and smush his cheek against the crisp, sun-warmed metal. 

“I love you, baby,” he murmurs to it and turns over to lay on his back and grin up into the Vegas sun. “I fuckin’ love Vegas.” 

He realizes what he's said as Ryan's head turns to look at him. 

He stares up at the sun, feels the metal of the fucking team-branded Lamborghini supporting him, the spin of the world under the loving influence of shitty, _shitty_ beers. He's warm. His heart is beating fast and strong. He's kind of nauseous. 

“I love Vegas,” he says quietly and means it for the first time. 

Ryan's hand comes to rest on his thigh for a second, a heavy weight digging gently into the muscle there for a satisfying moment. He's looking at Jon with something Jon really, truly has no idea how to interpret, but it's gone as soon as he blinks. 

“‘Nother beer?” he asks and Jon scrambles up and nearly falls on his ass trying to get his feet under him. 

“Where's Flower hiding the good shit?” he demands and Ryan's laughing at him again and yeah, okay, yes.

 

**8**

He wakes up with a bitch of a hangover in a room he vaguely thinks is probably one of Flower’s guest bedrooms. It’s dark except a sliver of cool morning light through the curtains. He’d apparently passed out facedown and there’s a wet patch of gross drool by his mouth. 

The house is silent. The room outside of the blankets it nice and cool. It must be something around five or six in the morning. 

There’s a body pressed up against his side, stiflingly warm. The leg thrown over his is heavy and longer than his. He knows who it is but glances over anyway, shifting the pillow so the wet drool patch is away from his face. 

Ryan. His fucking teammate Ryan fucking Reaves. 

It’s not like, unprecedented. It had happened a few times, hooking up with a teammate, not that he’s counting. That would be weird, would be something Jon wouldn’t let himself do. Counting stupid drunk hookups. He doesn’t do that. That shit ends badly, anyone can see. 

It had been three times. 

He bites down on the pillow, hard. 

He’d been a skip away from blind drunk every time. He’s a fucking idiot when he’s wasted, hungry for things he’s stupid for letting himself want. 

He can sort of vaguely remember how Ryan had managed to gentle him down last night. He’s always been a rowdy-ass drunk and Ryan has always wrangled him with insulting ease. It had been easy, he definitely remembers that much. 

He can remember soft hands and palms against his cheeks, a leg hooked around his. A heavy body pressing him down and holding him open. Not too much else. Just sense memories. 

Four times, then. 

There’s a hand at the small of his back, broad and calloused and unbearably warm. Jon throws himself sourly back into sleep.

 

**9**

Ryan’s up before he is, manages to extricate himself from around Jon somehow and escape without waking him. 

He’s a little grateful because he doesn’t know what the play is. He hopes a little bit that they aren’t going to talk about this, because he’s kind of in a good place right now and he knows he fucked up last night, but he doesn’t like, want to face the consequences of it. Sue him. 

He’s really grateful for the opportunity to piss out all the incredibly terrible punch he’d been tricked into drinking last night in peace, as well as for the quick shower he doesn’t allow himself to feel guilty for taking without asking. There’s being Canadian, and then there’s being Sidney Crosby, and Jon’s always liked the former option a bit more. 

Ryan is in the kitchen having a cup of coffee with Vero when Jon stamps his way down the stairs. 

“I’ll get you a cup,” she says and smiles at him beatifically, pointing at the water bottle leaving a ring of condensation on the counter and the little red pills next to it. Advil, thank fucking _god_. 

Ryan doesn’t say anything until Vero’s padded off to do something to the absolute rocketship of a machine Jon hopefully assumes dispenses coffee. He just looks at Jon as he downs the pills and chugs the water methodically, and he’s- he’s smiling a little. Just a tiny little bit. He doesn’t look upset or awkward at all. 

“You good?” he asks at last, softly, as the machine Vero is operating with adroit unconcern makes a truly alarming grinding noise. Jon glances at it impulsively and when he looks back Ryan’s outright grinning at him. 

“I, yeah,” he says, and Vero’s walking back to him with a chipped mug full of the most sinfully fragrant cup of coffee he’s ever lusted for. “Yeah, think I am.”

 

**10**

“Your wife is a goddamn angel,” he tells Fleury at practice the next day and Fleury checks him into the boards laughingly. 

“Get your own!” he shouts and skates away before Jon can fight back. 

His underwear is getting _so_ frozen, Jon resolves.

 

**11**

Fucking _playoffs_. 

There’s an absolute riot in the locker room and Jon throws himself into it with a battle cry, descending into the mass of elbows and back slaps and forehead bumps with absolute disregard for his own safety. He’s gonna get more bruises from the celebration than from the game and that’s fine by him. 

Engelland tugs him out a few minutes later and just shouts incoherently into his face for a second, shaking him by the shoulders. Jon shouts back and nearly breaks Engelland’s nose throwing himself in for the hug. Engelland doesn’t even really appear to notice, just pounds on Jon’s back like he thinks he’s getting paid for it. 

A fucking _playoffs_ spot in an expansion team’s very first season, holy _fuck_. 

“We’re going out!” someone shouts from across the room, probably Karlsson, and fully two thirds of the team scream their approval. Jon is absolutely one of them. It’s playoffs hockey on the fucking Vegas Strip, baby. 

“You’re staying in here until the media is done, boys,” the manager guarding the door tells them loudly, and everyone’s so happy no one even bitches too loudly about it.

 

**12**

David is the one that peels him out of the booth and drags him outside, somewhere half an hour past midnight. 

He’s fucking _plastered_. He’s so wasted and he’s feeling so good, and he lets himself loll back against the brickwork of the alley and watch David call a cab through lidded eyes. God, he feels so good. There’s liquid gold in his veins, and the lights overhead don’t stop glittering in Vegas. 

David glances back at him and grins and Jon blinks at him real slow. 

“I’m getting you home,” he says and Jon nods, takes the water bottle David hands him and drinks it obediently. He watches David the whole time, and if it bothers him at all it doesn’t show. He’s a little drunk too but not even close to as wasted as Jon is. 

The cab pulls up right as Jon’s starting to get cold so he feels totally justified in plastering himself to David’s side as soon as David slides into the seat next to him. Jon thinks vaguely, as the driver pulls away from the curb, that he smells really nice. 

“You’re always taking care of me,” he hums against David’s shoulder. 

“You always need me to take care of you,” he answers and he’s smiling, Jon can tell. It makes him smile too, and he pushes his face harder into David’s shoulder. He likes it when David smiles, he decides. It’s a good smile. 

“Do I ever say thank you?” he asks, and he’s never been more grateful David also speaks French, because he can’t imagine how to talk in English right now. He can’t believe _David_ managed to get his address across coherently in English. It’s a terrible language. 

“You don’t, because you’re a terrible ungrateful manchild,” David tells him and he’s full-on grinning now, like a fool, Jon can hear it in his voice. He’s gonna get chirped so hard later, he realizes, and then files that under ‘Future Jonathan Problems’. “But I know anyway, I am the greatest.” 

“Asshole,” Jon says, in English, because he’d have to be significantly more drunk and also dead not to remember that word in every language he knows. 

David’s still laughing as he hauls Jon out of the cab and leans back in to hand a stack of bills to the driver. He waves off change and the cab sputters away to leave Jon to try to fish his keys out of his pockets, which are being supremely uncooperative. Eventually David gives up and leans him against the door and pats him down, finding his keys in his back pocket eventually. 

It takes long enough to Jon to notice it. It takes long enough for him to feel David’s hand on his ass, warm and actually kind of incredibly good. 

He’s just gotten the idea to grind back against that hand when it finally withdraws, Jon’s keys held triumphantly aloft. Jon frowns in disappointment for a moment but then cheers when David gets the door open with ease and tugs him inside. 

It’s dark inside and Jon toes off his shoes in the hallway and then stops in the doorway to the living room and just looks. 

David is leaned up against the back of the couch, one arm tucked across his chest and his phone in the other, doing terrifically horrible things to his face with the unnatural lighting. His legs are way too long and Jon wants- he wants to-

David looks up at him in shock when he topples to his knees in front of him with all the grace of a concussed gazelle. He spares a moment to be grateful to the living room carpet and shuffles forward another few inches. 

They stare at each other for a beat. Jon puts a hand on David’s thigh to be absolutely sure the message is getting across. 

“Marchy,” David says, soft and shocked and Jon realizes how very quiet the room is. It must be past one in the morning. His vision is a tilt-a-whirl at the corners and he’s like, reasonably sure he’s not about to throw up on David’s dick, but not _absolutely positively_ sure. 

He wants so badly it’s indistinguishable from the usual burn, low and aching in his gut. 

“I want to,” he whispers. “Lemme put your dick in my mouth.” 

He watches David go from probably pretty much soft to blindingly hard in real time. It’s pretty sweet.

 

**13**

David cooks him breakfast the next morning and Jon thinks he might be a terrible person for watching him do it and thinking about Ryan, but then David slides the plate across to him along with a fresh Gatorade to replace the one Jon is nursing and points at him imperiously. 

“You will not be weird about this,” he says commandingly. 

“Okay,” Jon says. 

“Okay?” 

“Al _right_ ,” Jon whines and picks up his fork. “Fuck off, Perron, your dick is not a revelation.” 

“My dick is the second coming of Jesus Christ,” David retorts, mouth full of egg, eyes full of smile, and Jon is not entirely sure how this happened at all.

 

**14**

He doesn’t like, watch the other players in the showers. That shit is _not_ cool, not in any way or under any circumstances. 

For one thing, it’s skeevy as shit and Jon likes to respect himself. For another, he’s a big fan of not catching boners in the locker room. He’s not a teenager anymore by any means, and practice usually leaves him too wrung out to really want to think about getting it up, but it’s a good habit to carry on with anyway. 

So he doesn’t look. But he does think about it. He thinks about Ryan, broad and uncompromising and stupidly perceptive and surprisingly gentle anyway. He thinks about David, laughing and giving him shit and making him breakfast with his favorite flavour of Gatorade. He thinks about how good both of them had been, afterward. He thinks he really doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think. 

Someone snaps him with a towel while he’s too lost in thought to really retaliate. Probably Karlsson.

 

**15**

He holds the goddamn Campbell Bowl. 

He thinks pretty seriously about making out with it, and then decides not to after he sees the way Engelland looks at it. He’s sure someone’s probably tried to have sex with it in the past or something, and that shit might be communicable. 

He does kind of press his cheek lovingly to it. Some things just aren’t worth trying to fight, like a check from Zdeno or Ovechkin’s… everything. 

He can still _taste_ the goal Ryan had tipped in, slick and fast and perfect. He’s playing it over and over and over in his head and he feels drunk on it, drunk on the cool metal warming under his cheek. God, he fucking loves hockey. 

Fuck, he fucking loves Vegas. He loves this team. 

The trophy is yanked rudely out of his hands and he reels back with a laugh. The locker room is _so fucking loud_ around him, a mass of limbs and beer and Gatorade spraying everywhere. 

He fetches up against someone big and warm and when Ryan’s the one that spins him around he’s not at all surprised and actually kind of pleased. He grins up at Ryan and then decides that’s not nearly enough and reaches up to get his hands on Ryan’s cheeks to pinch them. 

“You’re amazing!” he shouts at Ryan, squishing his cheeks until he’s smiling as brilliantly as he should be. 

His eyes travel over Jon’s shoulder and Jon tips his head back to look. 

An upside-down David is watching them. His gaze is remarkably intent. He’s a still spot in the bustle of the locker room, just for a moment. 

The trophy passes in front of him and his eyes don’t even flicker down. 

When Jon looks back up at Ryan he looks considering, and he jerks his head in a motion Jon truly doesn’t get at all, and then they’re in motion. 

Ryan twists them and kind of hustles them around a little, Jon loses track of things in the novelty of his feet barely touching the ground, holy shit. He’d known Ryan’s bulk was probably ninety nine percent pure muscle, but the demonstration is _enlightening_. By the time he’s come back to what’s passing for his full senses at the moment, they’re crammed into the corner closest to Jon’s locker. 

He’s kind of trapped between them, Ryan’s arm around his shoulder and David’s body mostly blocking him off from the rest of the room. Surrounded, a little over-warm, and he looks up at both of them having a silent conversation over his head and thinks maybe he’s deciphering this play, finally. 

They both look at him when he puts a hand each on their closest hips, because there’s not a lot else he can reach without some strange contorting. 

“Yeah?” he challenges, and he’s not burning except in every way he is, and it doesn’t hurt anymore, it doesn’t hurt at all. 

“Yeah,” Ryan answers, and David echoes, and, yeah.


End file.
